Two Republicans recently gave critiques of two sides of the current Republican strategy.
David Stockman, Reagan's OMB Director and architect of the trickle down, supply side economic policy that he has since admitted was a failure, on the current Republican deficit reduction plan:
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Congressman Ryan is an earnest young man, but he has delivered up a Lincoln Day Dinner speech, not a serious deficit reduction blueprint.
The litmus test is RED--revenue, entitlements and defense. His plan takes a powder on all three, and falls back on the usual gimmickry of caps, targets, trends and pie-in-the-the sky reforms that are supposed to happen somewhere in the by-and-by.
There is currently $650 billion per year of temporary tax cuts which will expire before 2014 and if allowed to expire would contribute immensely to closing the budget gap. But in the GOP’s budgetary Alice-In-Wonderland, the Ryan plan extends nearly all of these unaffordable tax cuts--even for the billionaire bracket.
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The plan provides for no revenue (tax increases) and in fact, reduces revenue by $billions, dismantles Medicare for a more expensive private voucher plan, and does nothing to take a dent out of the bloated defense budget.
On the social policy side, I applaud what former Republican Senator Alan Simpson said recently:
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Simpsons really laid into his party, starting with abortion.
"Who the hell is for abortion? I don't know anybody running around with a sign that says 'Have an abortion, they're wonderful.' They're hideous. But they're a deeply intimate and personal decision and I don't think men legislators should even vote on the issue."
We have homophobes in our party. That's disgusting to me. We're all human beings. We're all God's children. Now, if they're going to get off on that stuff...Cruel, cruel things about homosexuals....that's the kind of guys that are going to be on my ticket, you know, it makes you sort out hard what Reagan said, you know, 'stick with your folks.' But I'm not sticking with people who are homophobic, anti-women, you know, moral values while you're diddling your secretary, while you're giving a speech on moral values. Come on, get off of it."
Former Republican Senator ALAN SIMPSON Rails On GOP: "Homophobic" And "Anti-Women"
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Not just homophobic and anti-women, but Islamophobic, anti-worker......
On both the economic policy side and the social policy side, the Republican strategy is a loser.